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rfmcdonaldIn line with today's previous posts, imagine a Canada that fell apart rather nastily.
* * *
I probably shouldn't have packed this book on my trip north of the border, for the sheer number of quiet horrors this book described if nothing else. This first-person journalistic account does a good job describing Canada's slide from the Second World War era, from final disaffection from the wider world to the election of successive Social Credit governments, from the decision to distract (most of) a populace outraged by economic failure with hatred of the Laurentians, from further economic failure and the "Quiet War" to the disastrous decision to judge the French decadent on racial and social grounds and invade St. Pierre and Miquelon in 1982. Everything after that, from the creation of an independent Laurentia including not only the old Province of Quebec but the Petitcodiac in the east and the right bank of the Ottawa River--including Vanier--to the west and Labrador to the north, from the quiet immiseration of both Canada and Laurentia, to the unsavoury nationalisms that dominate these countries even now, is expected.
My parents left Atlantic Canada, cut off from the main body of Canada depopulated more quickly than Ontario, early enough for me to be born with American citizenship but a claim to Canadian citizenship. (I've not nearly enough Acadians in my family background to claim Laurentian citizenship, if you were wondering.) My claim to Canadian citizenship has always seemed dubious, after all of the stupid street fights between Canadian- and Laurentian-American youth gangs back in Roxbury, after all the stupid street jokes about "Would you like fries with that, eh?", after all the stories of continued relative decline and occasional hyperinflational spike that I saw on the nightly television news. Less legitimately, I admit that I've tried to hide when friends and colleagues complain about the Canadians and Laurentians taking their jobs and thought that if they only knew ... But they don't since we fade in. The Laurentians don't, but they have their own thriving community to fall back upon, and it was the Laurentian-American community that played a role in prompting the United States government to let France to dictate most of the post-war peace.
The book makes the point to me that the war was so unnecessary. Social Credit did have a lot of support in Quebec, don't forget, and Laurentians might have been isolated by language from English Canadians but they shared a religion and much culture with the Irish-Canadians. (This might show, I'm tempted to argue, in the decrepitude of Cabbagetown and the other Irish neighbourhoods in east Toronto, and in the prevalence of Orangemen. Can the IRA be too far behind? But I digress.) The fact that the two sides had to carry out ethnoterritorial consolidations in Miramichi and Temiskaming and Vanier and Manitoba shows how the two nations had to be forcibly separated. They never will be completely, as Straithairn's blustering over Vanier shows; others will have to intervene, as shown by Ambassador Chesnutt's quiet reminder that it is the United States supports Canada's balance of payments. More's the reason not to live here.
On that note, I'm pleased to note that Sinclair has quite a bit to say about population movements. Laurentia's stable economic growth of late hasn't kept several hundred thousand Laurentians from permanently immigrating to my native New England since 1983. Canada is much the more notable provider of immigrants, with this province of Ontario alone sending a million to the Midwest and New England states. Community member-states are also recruiting immigrants here, for just as Germany has been recruiting Volga Germans, Spain Latin Americans, and Yugoslavia Bulgarians and Albanians, so have Britain and Ireland been actively recruiting immigrants with roots two- (Britain) or three- (Ireland) generation removed in the old country, Iceland going back four generations. He has even managed to touch on the tensions this has created between Canadians of older and newer stock.
"The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,/The Maple Leaf forever!" others might sing, but not me. I don't mean to knock any of my Toronto friends, yours is a nice city, but it could be and should have been nicer still and that's why I'm glad I don't have any part of it. It's just, well, Spain and Yugoslavia could manage their own transitions well enough, why couldn't you (or more precisely, your parents' generation)?
* * *
I probably shouldn't have packed this book on my trip north of the border, for the sheer number of quiet horrors this book described if nothing else. This first-person journalistic account does a good job describing Canada's slide from the Second World War era, from final disaffection from the wider world to the election of successive Social Credit governments, from the decision to distract (most of) a populace outraged by economic failure with hatred of the Laurentians, from further economic failure and the "Quiet War" to the disastrous decision to judge the French decadent on racial and social grounds and invade St. Pierre and Miquelon in 1982. Everything after that, from the creation of an independent Laurentia including not only the old Province of Quebec but the Petitcodiac in the east and the right bank of the Ottawa River--including Vanier--to the west and Labrador to the north, from the quiet immiseration of both Canada and Laurentia, to the unsavoury nationalisms that dominate these countries even now, is expected.
My parents left Atlantic Canada, cut off from the main body of Canada depopulated more quickly than Ontario, early enough for me to be born with American citizenship but a claim to Canadian citizenship. (I've not nearly enough Acadians in my family background to claim Laurentian citizenship, if you were wondering.) My claim to Canadian citizenship has always seemed dubious, after all of the stupid street fights between Canadian- and Laurentian-American youth gangs back in Roxbury, after all the stupid street jokes about "Would you like fries with that, eh?", after all the stories of continued relative decline and occasional hyperinflational spike that I saw on the nightly television news. Less legitimately, I admit that I've tried to hide when friends and colleagues complain about the Canadians and Laurentians taking their jobs and thought that if they only knew ... But they don't since we fade in. The Laurentians don't, but they have their own thriving community to fall back upon, and it was the Laurentian-American community that played a role in prompting the United States government to let France to dictate most of the post-war peace.
The book makes the point to me that the war was so unnecessary. Social Credit did have a lot of support in Quebec, don't forget, and Laurentians might have been isolated by language from English Canadians but they shared a religion and much culture with the Irish-Canadians. (This might show, I'm tempted to argue, in the decrepitude of Cabbagetown and the other Irish neighbourhoods in east Toronto, and in the prevalence of Orangemen. Can the IRA be too far behind? But I digress.) The fact that the two sides had to carry out ethnoterritorial consolidations in Miramichi and Temiskaming and Vanier and Manitoba shows how the two nations had to be forcibly separated. They never will be completely, as Straithairn's blustering over Vanier shows; others will have to intervene, as shown by Ambassador Chesnutt's quiet reminder that it is the United States supports Canada's balance of payments. More's the reason not to live here.
On that note, I'm pleased to note that Sinclair has quite a bit to say about population movements. Laurentia's stable economic growth of late hasn't kept several hundred thousand Laurentians from permanently immigrating to my native New England since 1983. Canada is much the more notable provider of immigrants, with this province of Ontario alone sending a million to the Midwest and New England states. Community member-states are also recruiting immigrants here, for just as Germany has been recruiting Volga Germans, Spain Latin Americans, and Yugoslavia Bulgarians and Albanians, so have Britain and Ireland been actively recruiting immigrants with roots two- (Britain) or three- (Ireland) generation removed in the old country, Iceland going back four generations. He has even managed to touch on the tensions this has created between Canadians of older and newer stock.
"The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,/The Maple Leaf forever!" others might sing, but not me. I don't mean to knock any of my Toronto friends, yours is a nice city, but it could be and should have been nicer still and that's why I'm glad I don't have any part of it. It's just, well, Spain and Yugoslavia could manage their own transitions well enough, why couldn't you (or more precisely, your parents' generation)?
